Poems for the Scottish Feminist Judgments Project

“At once I was viewing evidence; I was the victim’s relative; the victim of violence and legal agent. The four poems provide a thoughtful and well considered insight into lost perspectives – most importantly, that of the victim – permanently silenced.”

(Radical Art Review)

In 2017-18 I was one of the creative collaborators on the Scottish Feminist Judgments Project (SFJP). The four poems I wrote in response to the project have taken on a life of their own. They will be published in a legal textbook and have been displayed, alongside other art created for SFJP, in the Scottish Parliament and in Edinburgh and Glasgow. One poem has been set to music. (If you’re in Edinburgh in August 2019, you can see the SFJP creative works on display for free).

The Scottish Feminist Judgments Project is the Scottish incarnation of a global series reimagining key legal judgments from a feminist perspective, looking at how laws can be made and applied in a more gender equitable way. As recently explained in a feature in the Scotsman:

“…three academics – Sharon Cowan, professor of feminist and queer legal studies at Edinburgh University, Vanessa Munro, professor of law at Warwick University, and Chloë Kennedy, lecturer in criminal law at Edinburgh University – co-ordinated the Scottish Feminist Judgment Project, an initiative which involved re-examining 16 important legal judgments from a feminist perspective. They found the decisions the judges had reached were by no means inevitable, and that, in many cases, a feminist perspective would not only have altered the outcome, but taken the law in a different direction.

When I was asked to be part of SFJP I was interested, but not entirely sure what it entailed. I attended an early workshop with a large group of academic lawyers as they discussed the project. I admit I was struggling to see how I might make poems from the legal cases themselves, but I was intrigued by the dilemmas and debates of the lawyers and by the possibility for change. For their part, the academic lawyers were welcoming but clearly not certain what the artists would produce, or how the artworks would connect to the wider project (more of that later).

It was difficult to choose one case to focus on, but in the end I felt driven to choose Drury v HM Advocate, 1998. The Scotsman article summarises it succinctly:

“Stuart Drury had been stalking his ex-partner Marilyn McKenna – there were interdicts against him – when he turned up at her house and found her with another man. He took a claw hammer and bludgeoned her multiple times … she died in hospital the following day. Drury insisted that, though they no longer lived together, they were still in a relationship, although his convictions for stalking make this unlikely. He was unanimously convicted of murder, but not before the judge had ruled that it would be appropriate for the jury to consider a defence of “provocation by sexual infidelity”. In England and Wales, provocation by sexual infidelity is not enough in itself to ground a defence, but it is enough in Scotland.”

How to write about it? What could poetry add?

It took me a while to find my approach. I’ve long admired poems by Muriel Ruykeyser, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde and June Jordan which engage with political themes, so I reread some of their work. I was very conscious that my voice is not, cannot be, the victim’s voice. That would be appropriation of the crassest sort. I decided to focus on my reactions to the original judgment and the feminist judge’s report to the project group members in April 2018.

Four poems resulted.

Provocation: is a found poem. I sat with a 36 page printout of the original judgment and highlighted words and phrases that struck me. I felt that the appalling end of Marilyn McKenna was buried in the judgment, and using only words extracted from the original judgment, this short poem tries to cut through that.

The Institutional Writers: I was very struck by the comments of the feminist judge (Prof Claire McDiarmid) about the institutional writers (ancient legal authorities), in particular Hume, who looms over the argument in the original judgment. She asked, do you quote Hume, work with him, or shove him aside? (I should add this took place in the University of Edinburgh’s New College, in a room full of ornate, venerable furniture  and under the watchful gaze of any number of portraits of white men in gowns and robes.)

Not here: describes how I started to think about the victim, who seemed to have been overwritten by the lengthy, arcane arguments.

Fragment is a short poem focusing attention on the absence of the victim in the lives of those who loved her. Ali Burns has written a very beautiful 4 part choral composition, Absentia, using my words. I’m absolutely thrilled, not least because it’s been sung at Law and Medical School graduations at the University of Edinburgh in 2019.

I’m very grateful to SFJP’s Sharon, Vanessa & Chloe for recruiting me to this project, not least for ensuring that the artistic contributors were paid for our work. Huge thanks too to textile artist Jill Kennedy-McNeill, the artists’ coordinator, who herded the cats – no mean feat, given we numbered a textile artist, two writers, a photographer, an illustrator, a composer and a theatre director. I found it fascinating to work alongside artists from other art forms, though we worked in tandem rather than collaboratively.

It’s gratifying to hear that my poems have been used to stimulate discussion and as teaching aids by the academic lawyers involved in the project. I hope they stand on their own, too.

The SFJP book, a hefty and expensive academic tome, is published in autumn 2019. The SFJP poems will be republished in my (rather more reasonably priced) next collection in autumn 2020.

I remain humbled by the gravity of this case. I’m proud to be part of a project that has created a new spark of connection and creativity between legal and creative worlds. Long may that flourish.